Or didn't exist to begin with. All too often mythologized into an absurd caricature of the past.

I didn't realize that such causes like 90+% income taxes, lower income inequality, single earner households, and high unionization rates are "conservative" too.

Actually, a past that never existed. It's pretty typically for authoritarian regimes to create idealized versions of the past as they attempt to rewrite history to better fit with their talking points and agendas.